Abstract
The Chang’e-4 (CE-4) lunar probe, the first soft landing spacecraft on the far side of the Moon, successfully landed in the Von Kármán crater on 3 January 2019. Geological studies of the landing area have been conducted and more intensive studies will be carried out with the in situ measured data. The chronological study of the maria basalt surrounding the CE-4 landing area is significant to the related studies. Currently, the crater size-frequency distribution (CSFD) technique is the most popular method to derive absolute model ages (AMAs) of geological units where no returned sample is available, and it has been widely used in dating maria basalt on the lunar surface. In this research, we first make a mosaic with multi-orbital Chang’e-2 (CE-2) images as a base map. Coupled with the elevation data and FeO content, nine representative areas of basalt units surrounding the CE-4 landing area are outlined and their AMAs are derived. The dating results of the nine basalt units indicate that the basalts erupted from 3.42 to 2.28 Ga ago in this area, a period much longer than derived by previous studies. The derived chronology of the above basalt units establishes a foundation for geological analysis of the returned CE-4 data.
Highlights
Chang’e-4 (CE-4) was the second soft landing mission in the China’s Lunar Exploration Program, and the probe successfully landed on the far side of the Moon in theVon Kármán crater inside the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin on 3 January 2019 [1,2]
Many studies related to the CE-4 landing area have been recently carried out (e.g., [7,8,9,10,11,12,13]), and more works are in progress with the returned CE-4
Craters for dating absolute model ages (AMAs) were mapped in a Digital Orthophoto Map (DOM) mosaic generated from CE-2 orbital images
Summary
Chang’e-4 (CE-4) was the second soft landing mission in the China’s Lunar Exploration Program, and the probe successfully landed on the far side of the Moon in theVon Kármán crater inside the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin on 3 January 2019 [1,2]. Chang’e-4 (CE-4) was the second soft landing mission in the China’s Lunar Exploration Program, and the probe successfully landed on the far side of the Moon in the. The. Yutu-2 rover was successfully released from the lander on the same day, and it is still working as of now. The SPA basin is an elliptical impact basin with axes measuring. [5] demonstrates that the SPA must have sampled the Moon’s upper mantle to depths of 100 km. A number of fundamental lunar science questions, such as the composition of the lunar upper mantle [6] and the reason that far side maria differ from their near side counterparts [1], are expected to be addressed with the returned CE-4 data. Many studies related to the CE-4 landing area have been recently carried out (e.g., [7,8,9,10,11,12,13]), and more works are in progress with the returned CE-4
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